Pair of rats wanted, plus accessories!

Hello,
My daughter's birthday is coming up next week and has her heart set on pet rats! We're an animal loving household with three kids (and another on the way), our eldest has global developmental delay so the sensory stimulation pet rats could bring to him would be very beneficial too.

We've never owned rats before, just dogs, cats, guinea-pigs and of course many many ladybirds, slugs, tadpoles and butterflies... so care advice would be greatly appreciated, along with advice on how to find a reputable breeder?

Thanks in advance

Kate

Welcome the only breeder i would recommend would be BongoFury-Zounds on here her guys are amazing ,theres a lot of dodgy "breeders" around that i would definately avoid..If you have a look through the posts here in health and behaviour you should find some interesting pieces.Rats are sociable animals so need to be in same sex pairs or groups.Id recomend having found a good rat vet before getting them too

What Grace said Welcome to the forum - I won't have anything ready for anyone's birthday of course, we have a fairly long waiting list too However, one thing we have done for people in the past, if the rats are wanted for a child's birthday, is say that on that child's birthday they perhaps get a cage and accessories, and come and visit the rattery and get to know a bit more about the rats first, and know that they are going on a waiting list for the right babies to be born. This doesn't work for everyone of course, and sometimes having the cage can just be upsetting if there's nothing in it -so some prefer to visit on the birthday, and the cage comes later on, when you get the rats
xx

Thanks for all the advice, that sounds like a plan.. I'm sure she won't mind waiting for the right rat babies. I wasn't sure if births are seasonal or not! We'd be very interested in joining the queue to acquire a pair of rats if that's possible, I read the post regarding cage transfer so we'd be very happy to pay that fee when the time arises.

Am I right in guessing that your operational hub is based in Cork only? That's a bit of a drive for us just for viewing but absolutely fine for collection. I suppose it's silly asking how long a wait we might be in for? Nature is quirky. We're expecting a human litter in January so it would be great to base our plans around that somehow!!

Thanks

K

Cage transfer? I think perhaps I'm missing something? :/ I don't sell cages or accessories myself...

I would imagine it will be quite a lot later than January - but you never know. I do have some litters planned, but I doubt they will be bred until after Christmas... I will know more in the next few weeks about my plans anyway.

Usually we say people need to wait 6 months to a year on average, depending on how big the litters are and how many we need to keep to further our lines etc. There are so many factors involved.

Drop me an e-mail on zoundzy@hotmail.com and we can chat further anyway!

xx